"Wait a minute. That's not the important part. You'll have to take somebody in to dinner. And she's about the nicest girl I know, and she wants very much to meet the author of 'Dick Smith,' and I promised that she should. There will be two or three others ... Ellis and his fiancée ... I told you Ellis had just got engaged ... but we shall not be more than ten all told. Will you face it, Henry, just to oblige a friend?"
A dinner party of ten with ladies was rather a facer for Mr. Henry Harper, in spite of the fact that his social laurels were clustering thicker upon him.
"I suppose I'll have to if you've promised her," he said with not ungracious reluctance.
"I'm sure you'll like her as much as she'll like you," said Edward Ambrose.
That remains to be seen was the mental reservation in the mind of the Sailor.
XXV
Friday week soon came, but very unfortunately it found Cora "in one of her moods."
The first intimation she had of the dinner party was the arrival of a parcel of evening clothes, which Harry had purchased that morning in the Strand. As ladies were to be present, his sense of the fitness of things had led him at last to incur this long-promised expense. Indeed, Cora herself had said that sooner or later this would have to be. But now that the clothes had actually arrived and she insisted upon being told for what purpose they were required, she flew into a tantrum.
In Cora's opinion, there had been too much dining already with this Mr. Ambrose, and now that Harry was being invited to meet ladies, had Mr. Ambrose been a true gentleman she would have been invited as well. It did not occur to her that he was not aware of her existence. But in any case Harry ought not to be going to meet other women without his wife.